Senza Misura
by Dana Janeway
Summary: This is a companion piece to my two Star Trek: Voyager stories, "Apocrypha" and "Star of the County Down." Warnings: Dark subject matter, violence, language, femslash.
1. Prologue

Prologue

My body is on fire. She twists and turns inside of me, she knows every part of me, everything I've tried to hide, every secret, every sin. It doesn't matter. She forgives me, even if I can never forgive myself. She is electricity running through me, I want her so desperately that even when we are finished, it is never really over. She is my constant craving, my addiction and the weapon at my back, holding me prisoner.

She is never gentle on nights like this. She possesses my body, she controls me. Her mouth invades my center, and it is the most excruciating combination of pleasure and pain that I have ever experienced. She knows exactly how to bring me almost to orgasm, and then she slows down until I scream her name, begging for release. And then, when she finally gives in...

Crazy. I feel completely crazy. My mind is gone, and we are crazy together. I am wrapped in her arms, shivering, and she protects me. But there is no protection from this desperate longing, from the ache in my chest as I gaze into her spectacular black eyes.

I never want to look into another pair of eyes. I never want the touch of another hand, nor the kiss from anyone's lips but hers. She is the beginning, and the end of my desire.

"So," I say nonchalantly once I've recovered, drawing my flimsy robe around my waist and swinging my legs out of bed, "where will you go for your honeymoon?"


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One

"Beverly, why do we have to talk about this?"

"How can we not talk about it? You've gotten engaged to the man, Deanna. I don't understand how this is possible."

I pulled her hair back from her face, holding her in my arms. Her eyes glistened in the dimly lit room, the light of the moon softly streaming through the curtains.

"You have... a genetic predisposition to honesty. And yet here you are, here _we_ are, making no move to stop deceiving everyone."

Tears formed in her eyes, and fell, and while I loathed making her cry, I could not bear to avoid reality for one more second.

"I know," she said. "I don't understand it either."

She looked away from me.

"What is it Dea?"

"You think I've stopped loving you. You think this engagement to Will means that I don't feel for you what you feel for me. Can't you see that's the farthest thing from the truth?"

She kissed my lips, softly, her open mouth merging into mine, her tongue making slow circles.

"Dea..."

"Please," she breathed. "I need you. I love you."

With all the resolve I had, I broke the kiss and forced her to look at me.

"But you won't be with me," I said. "You want me to live in your fear with you, and I won't. I do love you, too much to share you with someone else. So this has to end. I don't have to be Betazoid to sense that living a lie will destroy you one day. It's tearing you apart, Dea. And it's breaking my heart in just about a million pieces."

She put her hand on my heart, feeling it beating. "I know, sweet girl," she said, tears glistening on her cheeks. "I don't know how I've become so weak. I've abandoned everything I believe in, everything my people have stood for. Because I can't be without you, Beverly, I just don't know how."

She buried her head in my shoulder, holding me so tightly that it nearly hurt. I hung on to her in just the same manner, my hand on the back of her head, drawing her closer, as if we could, if only we tried hard enough, become one person instead of two.

"I never wanted to wait for anyone," I whispered, "but I have no choice. I would happily die a lonely old woman, rather than spend the rest of my life with someone else. But I have to let you go now, Dea. I have to let you go."


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Letting go of Deanna Troi's hand, and watching her slip out the door to my apartment, was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

And I don't say that lightly – I have had a fairly tumultuous life, by most standards. I have seen my share of disasters, lost many people close to me, and as a doctor I have had to watch patients die under my care, and accept the limitations of my knowledge and my power to effect change in the world.

But losing her was like nothing else I had ever experienced. No one even knew we were together – not my son, not my closest friends and family. We had been lovers in secret, never appearing in public together as anything other than colleagues, never so much as touching hands in the street.

Behind the doors to my quarters on the Enterprise, and inside my apartment in San Francisco, we knew each other inside and out. As much as it was possible to know someone, Deanna knew me. She knew my deepest insecurities, and she was somehow able to make me laugh at them, and at myself. She knew how to touch me like no one had ever touched me – it was a touch that radiated through my body, and it made me feel as if there were no barrier at all between us. We were a part of each other.

And she was going to marry someone else. Because, even in our modern age, enough prejudice against unconventional relationships existed to make her fear rejection from her family and her people. And maybe even, on some level, from Starfleet.

I didn't care about any of it. I refused to let any antiquated bigotry stand in the way of my love for her. If it had been up to me, I would have shouted it from the proverbial rooftops and over the proverbial mountains, all the way to the Q continuum and back.

All I felt now was longing and regret. I awoke each morning with a terrible pain in my chest, knowing that there would be no knock at my door, no whispered message across the com system, no flowers magically appearing at my nightstand.

The bright morning sun had lost its brightness somehow – it shone but only dimly, as if the fire that kept it alive was muted in sympathy with us. _It is not so much true that all the world loves a lover, but that a lover loves all the world._ How accurate was that tried and true saying! And how accurate, too, that a person who has known love and lost it, sees the whole world differently.

I arrived a half an hour late to work, very unusually, and I hadn't realized that it was one of the busiest days of the year. I gave the oldest Admiral in Starfleet his annual physical exam and dismissed him with a clean bill of health, promising he would outlive us all and halfway meaning it.

After that, I saw a young couple who were expecting their first child together. I watched them as they listened to the baby's heartbeat, and I wished above all else that I could share in their joy instead of adding up my own miseries.

When I showed them out, I noticed a woman in my waiting room that I had never seen before. She was not dressed in a Starfleet uniform, yet I had to think that she was an officer because my current practice did not extend beyond Starfleet personnel. My staff confirmed that she was indeed on the patient list. What was more, she looked in a terrible state. She had cuts on her face and arms, dark circles under her eyes and an unearthly pallor to her skin.

"Cassandra Weatherfield?"

Silently, she stood up and followed me into the medical bay.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

It is, I believe, one of the small tragedies of human experience that things are rarely as they appear to be. Think of anything you hold sacred; a hero, a system of values, the image of a stalwart crew of officers, making their way across the galaxy with no bitterness or recrimination between them. The eyes of history do not see beneath the surface, blinded are they by the opaque lenses of power and politics. It is only the most diligent and patient of observers who, sifting through the wreckage of dubious eyewitness accounts and shoddy journalism, might chance to discover the truth.

I left a poker game aboard the Enterprise because I realized I had fallen in love with her. I said I had a terrible headache, and I needed to take care of it as quickly as possible, and something about an early duty shift.

In my opinion, there are very few legitimate reasons to leave a poker game early; perhaps that night I stumbled upon the only one. I've asked myself many times what it was that made me understand once and for all, and I think I've narrowed it down to her inability to bluff. She could have won the last hand easily if she had only known how to keep up appearances, and when she turned over her cards with that impossibly innocent smile, half wistful and half amused, one hand on her throat, I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

I lifted myself shakily from my chair and practically ran from the room. It wasn't enough that I had developed inappropriate feelings for my friend and crewmate; it wasn't enough that I was struggling with my sexuality at an age when all of that should have been behind me.

She knew. She had to have known. Just by looking at me, just by being in the same room with me, sensing my energy. I was devastated, humiliated, terrified.

I thought that if I were to limit the amount of time we spent together, there might be some chance that she wouldn't find out. For weeks afterward, I made myself incredibly busy, with vaccines and epidemics and every Munchausen-like maneuver I could think of. I asked Ensign Bateman to come in six times to check on a bunion. Every time she asked me to spend any time with her outside of work, I was unavailable. I kept saying that the stress was getting to me and I'd have to slow down one of these days, but that was the life of a chief medical officer aboard a starship.

About a month after the poker night, I was alone in my quarters, nearly falling asleep on my sofa with a slew of reports that I hadn't the energy to go on reading. I heard the chirp of the doorbell, and got up to answer without remembering to ask who it was.

When I saw her standing there, I stiffened and looked down at my half-unbuttoned uniform jacket.

"Deanna," I said, "I'm sorry, I –"

She tilted her head to the side. "I thought you said you were taking inventory in the cargo bay tonight, and that's why you couldn't have dinner with me."

"The cargo bay," I said, gathering my wits about me just enough to berate myself for having come up with such an absurd excuse. "I finished a bit early."

She let herself in without being asked, and stood across the room with me with her arms gently folded.

"Beverly, what in the world is going on?"

I felt horribly self-conscious with my uniform jacket unbuttoned, but I was somehow unable to take any concrete action to fix my appearance. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that you've been avoiding me for weeks. One wouldn't have to be Betazoid to figure that much out. What I don't understand is why. Did I do something wrong? I thought we were friends."

My heart ached with regret. "We are friends."

"Well, it hasn't really felt that way lately. What aren't you telling me?"

I looked at the floor, the ceiling, out the window at the expressionless stars, anywhere but at her face. I could feel tears forming in my eyes, and as much as I pleaded with them not to fall, they disobeyed.

"Beverly..."

"I don't have to tell you," I said. "Don't you know already?"

"No," she replied, staring at me with her wide brown eyes. "I haven't the faintest idea. I wish you'd tell me."

I shook my head silently.

"Whatever it is, Beverly, I'll understand."

"I'm not going to tell you," I said quietly. "I would never have told you. But it's no use. Just stay here for a few minutes longer, and you'll know."

Slowly, she began to walk toward me, a concentrated expression on her face. "I know you're in pain," she said, frowning, "because you think that I – because I won't –"

The expression on her face began to change as she approached me. Her gaze, so full of empathy and kindness, felt only like a microscope exposing my shame, exposing me.

"Beverly."

"Deanna, please. Just leave me alone. We've served together for four years, and it will likely be longer, please just forget you know this about me, I'm begging you."

But she continued to search my eyes with her blinding gaze, her hands lightly touching my shoulders.

"How long?"

"What?"

"How long?"

I had no good answer. "I'm not sure," I said. "Probably since the moment I first saw you, but I just didn't know then -"

Before I could avert my eyes, she lifted my chin and pressed her lips to mine. She tangled her hands in my hair, drawing me closer to her and slipping her tongue inside my mouth.

Before I had the time to register what was happening to me, she quickly pulled away, and left without saying a word. She left me with tears stinging my eyes, staring at the doorframe, one hand over my mouth where her kiss still burned.

-PAGE BREAK-

I could not tell if she had kissed me out of curiosity, or compassion, or something else. Truthfully, I didn't want to know. After that night, I continued to keep away from her as much as I could. I knew full well that she was involved with someone else, and I also knew that I valued my career aboard the Enterprise, and did not wish to embarrass myself any more than I already had.

I tried, with varying success, not to think of her at all. And the truth was that I really did keep myself busy, and life on the Enterprise was hardly uneventful. But every time I saw her face my heart leapt in my chest, and I could barely breathe. Every time she walked past me, every time we were in the same room.

She was like a princess from a fairy tale, so sensitive and delicate that she couldn't be touched. I believed it was my duty a to remain far away from her, and to deny my feelings for as long as I knew her.

Another few weeks went by, and then she asked me if she could come and see me again. I wanted to say no, but I said yes, either out of weakness or simply out of a desire not to appear rude.

She was wearing a beautiful black dress that I had never seen before. I wore my uniform, my ironed, buttoned Starfleet Uniform, and I invited her into my quarters for tea, and I talked for probably an hour about a seminar I had attended on Orkett's disease. Etiology, demographics, subtypes, comorbidity, prognosis, and of course, treatment.

"Beverly."

"And really, it's a terrible shame that these bone marrow transplants weren't implemented earlier, it could most likely have saved hundreds of lives, but of course we'll never know, because even with the transplant there are still risks involved, there are always risks and complications –"

"Beverly."

"Yes."

She had risen from her chair, and she sank delicately onto the sofa, tucking her legs underneath her.

"I don't really want to talk about Orkett's disease."

"Oh," I said quietly, and against my better judgment I went to sit beside her, and I looked into her wide lovely eyes. "What should we talk about, then?"

It was basically an innocent question, but she looked at me as if I had just asked something obscene.

She stared at me, long and hard, and then she said, "I'm not sure I want to talk at all."

Her eyes traveled slowly across my face, she looked at me with the most intense gaze, and finally she leaned forward, only slightly.

"Deanna," I said, before she could touch me. "This... this isn't a good idea."

She smiled under half-closed lids. "I know it isn't a good idea," she replied.

"You've been involved with Will for a long time."

"Yes," she said, quietly releasing the top button of my uniform.

"And we work together."

"Yes." She unzipped my jacket on the side, and it fell, revealing the small blue tank top I wore underneath. She drew in her breath, staring at me. I never in a million years thought she would stare at me that way.

Slowly, she leaned closer, and brushed my shoulder with her lips.

"Deanna."

She looked, her eyes intense and almost pleading. "Please, Beverly."

"I don't want to stop this," I said, "but I have to."

She shook her head. "I have to know," she said. "I can't go the rest of my life, not knowing how this feels."

I stopped for a moment to consider the weightiness of that argument. But in another moment her lips crashed into mine, and she was kissing me, and I became incapable of thinking at all.

I was scared of being intimate with her, not only because I didn't think she returned my feelings, but because of her tremendous intuitive abilities. I had never before been with someone who didn't have to guess anything about me, who knew what I wanted just by looking at me and being in my presence.

It was an experience not for the faint of heart. I felt my skin burning into hers, I felt the secret pages of my innermost desires falling open at her hands, and yet I didn't care. I wanted her to see every part of me. I loved her curiosity, the way her hands ripped my clothes away almost roughly, and then she would come down so lightly over me, and touch my naked body with a gentleness I had never before felt in my life.

We made love for the first time that night, over and over so many times that afterward I felt I had come to understand her almost the same way she understood me. I was instantly addicted to her touch, and I knew, even as she lay beside me, that the moment her arms would slip away I would feel the most terrible longing.

We stayed awake, as if sleeping would somehow render what had happened between us more imaginary.

"Those things we did... you know, I've never done them before," she whispered.

I rolled my eyes at her. "Well, that's why you wanted to fuck me, isn't it?"

She looked shocked. "I didn't want to _fuck_ you, for goodness sake."

"Oh no?"

She wrinkled her nose. "No. I wanted to make love to you."

I turned away when she said that, and it took me several moments before I could meet her gaze again.

"Why is that?" I asked.

She traced the line of my cheek and jaw with her hand, and wiped my shy tears away. "Because I love you," she said simply.

It was very beautiful, that night, to hear her say it. But no matter how many times she would say it, in the weeks and months and years that followed, I never really believed her.


End file.
